Curse

Symbol · Nov 03, 2007, 11:28 PM // 23:28

Quote:

ineptitude, clumsiness: change mechanics to "if target foe is attacking, that foe is interrupted" and take damage/get blinded. alternatively, we can just reduce the duration of both down to 1..2 seconds. my method might be overnerfing it though.

If you change clumsiness that way the cast time needs to come down to .25sec so people can at least try to use it to catch attack skills on reaction.

Kaon · Nov 03, 2007, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

however, keep in mind that we're also dealing with a skill balancer who's "horribly addicted to TF2", and wants to see everyone not just get rolled over, but absolutely blown up by high powered offense. his method of recapturing the back-and-forth, high-intensity battles of pre-NF gvg is to make everything do more damage. i don't think i need to remind everyone how that went. as such, good luck trying to convince him to tone down physical offense, 'cause that's not gonna happen. the only viable alternative is toning up the monks to keep pace, or else he's gonna go for the next possible option, which is nerfing select monk skills to dissuade monk runners, and at the same time force everyone to stock up on passive defense again because of possible weaker stand monks.

May i inform you that over the past 2 months, and the past weeks especially, ive played a LOT of gvg's, and not a single one of them was a boring standoff. They all ended quickly or had a lot of up and downs, and at the very least had a crapload of deaths. Metagame at the moment is VERY offensive, and VERY quick and lethal.

The only exception to that can be dedicated split which sometimes means running around for 20minutes. But we actually manage to rape their mainteam too, sinsplit, clumsiness, or whatever they do, we kill them and they die.

iriyabran · Nov 03, 2007, 11:56 PM // 23:56

tonight was my worst gvg run in a long time
bloodspike,ride the lighning spike,malendru dervishes with splinter on burning isle, heroway...i don't even want to remember
we fought against every shit i can name
i go back to this thread and the last thing i would like to see is nerf to the monks
it's so not fun anymore

InfernalSuffering · Nov 04, 2007, 12:22 AM // 00:22

I actually had the opposite experience in the only GvG I did today. The one match was 55 minutes long due to both teams having three monk backlines and the health shrine trading sides (Wurms).

Captain Robo · Nov 04, 2007, 12:59 AM // 00:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

May i inform you that over the past 2 months, and the past weeks especially, ive played a LOT of gvg's, and not a single one of them was a boring standoff. They all ended quickly or had a lot of up and downs, and at the very least had a crapload of deaths. Metagame at the moment is VERY offensive, and VERY quick and lethal.

The only exception to that can be dedicated split which sometimes means running around for 20minutes. But we actually manage to rape their mainteam too, sinsplit, clumsiness, or whatever they do, we kill them and they die.

You can inform him all you want because that's exactly what he's saying. Izzy has crafted the game into a RED ENGINE GO RED ENGINE GO fragfest.

The metagame is very quick and lethal because it revolves around shutting down LoD, spiking before another layer of block can be applied, and overloading everyone with incredible pressure. Physical damage is more powerful than it has ever been; caster damage pales in comparison and casters have been forced into a supportive role; the healing ability of monks has remained stagnant in the face of ever increasing physical power: we're at the point where its almost NECESSARY to have a third monk running flags to assist with the healing.

twicky_kid · Nov 04, 2007, 02:33 AM // 02:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

You can inform him all you want because that's exactly what he's saying. Izzy has crafted the game into a RED ENGINE GO RED ENGINE GO fragfest.

The metagame is very quick and lethal because it revolves around shutting down LoD, spiking before another layer of block can be applied, and overloading everyone with incredible pressure. Physical damage is more powerful than it has ever been; caster damage pales in comparison and casters have been forced into a supportive role; the healing ability of monks has remained stagnant in the face of ever increasing physical power: we're at the point where its almost NECESSARY to have a third monk running flags to assist with the healing.

I don't see why this is a bad thing. It leaves less room for error.

If we have a defensive meta people bitch. We have an offensive meta people bitch. We have a pressure meta people bitch. We have a spike meta people bitch.

Anyone else see a theme here?

Honestly I'm happy to see 5-10 minute matches again. When a match does go to VoD you know its a very well played match on both sides. The meta is very reflective of how well a team works together instead of how many layers of defense can I stack and wait for VoD.

Xioden · Nov 04, 2007, 03:37 AM // 03:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seamus Finn

Try adding your own special flavor to any map you play on by inviting someone to your guild who has the intelligence to defend a base gank. Npcs add enough hazard with pindown and headshots. Your real problem seems to be that one can't train a monkey to go collapse on someone "spamming apply,nat stride and burning arrow" on your archers.

Mending Touch > Pindown. Anything else is either a completely unsupported split that wouldn't have accomplished much due to having no split-support, or they're with something that can support a split in which case they'll have something to deal with a few seconds of cripple. And do you GvG with people using holiday headpieces? These "headshots" are news to me. That said, having split successfully a number of times as a shock-axe warrior relying solely on a vampiric weapon for any sort of life gain, I can safely say it's pathetically easy. So yea, if anyone wants to comment on "non-dedicated splits"... been there, done that.

Collapsing back? Collapsing is a joke in the current meta.

I still stand by what I said. The maps should be more than just a different layout/skin with a completely irrelevant hazard thrown in.

moriz · Nov 04, 2007, 04:20 AM // 04:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

I don't see why this is a bad thing. It leaves less room for error.

If we have a defensive meta people bitch. We have an offensive meta people bitch. We have a pressure meta people bitch. We have a spike meta people bitch.

Anyone else see a theme here?

Honestly I'm happy to see 5-10 minute matches again. When a match does go to VoD you know its a very well played match on both sides. The meta is very reflective of how well a team works together instead of how many layers of defense can I stack and wait for VoD.

the problem is the means of achieving such an end. the old pre-NF metagame was largely dependent on strong mesmer effects, creating (very small) windows of opportunities, and having the strong-yet-not-retardedly-powerful physicals drive home the kills. now, it's largely dependent on shutting down LoD and other passive defense, creating massive holes in opponent defenses and just c-space-frenzy things to death. or just the old 321 spike method. both work quite well.

the old metagame relied a great deal of skill and coordination between teammates, since each window of opportunity lasts maybe 6 seconds at most. with physicals back then cannot completely overwhelm opponents by themselves, it created a challenging and fun environment with success depending on many aspects of teamplay.

now, physicals are much strong, neccessitating passive defense webs and LoD to keep a team afloat just to deal with the damage physicals can deal out by c-space-frenzying. it's like teams are suspended by a thread, and once that thread has been cut, it just crumples. mesmer/shutdown have become essentially shutting down a layer of passive defense, and nailing LoD. the windows of opportunities are now massive, with each lasting 20 seconds or more. as a result, less skill and coordination are needed today to beat a team than before.

as ensign have already noted, scaling back physical damage and increasing the power of mesmer effects are the ways to go. unfortunately, izzy will never in a hundred years scale back physicals since he wants to see teams blow up left and right. so buffing monks up to keep pace with the damage is the next logical step to fix it.

twicky_kid · Nov 04, 2007, 04:47 AM // 04:47

Pre-NF the tactic was lets see who can DP a monk out first. After that the team could crumble just like they do now.

Teams still cordinate their spikes using divert, shame, and gale to create holes. The passive defense was really a response to this tactic. If both your monks are locked down you know have an extra layer of defense to rely on. This tactic has evolved with or without NF's help. The only skill that has been added to the game to add to the layers is Defensive Anthem. Aegis and wards have been here since day one.

The reason those skill were not as popular back then as they are now is mobility. Teams could easily split to combat their effects but everyone was on the same playing field as far as power in splits.

Now bringing everything up to present day. Sins have too much mobility and mending touch has destroyed the balance of power in splits. Mel's dervish also tips the balance scale in splits.

Instead of relying on splits people now pack as much power into their main team to force no team to split. If the team does split their main team will roll the flag stand team before you can take down a few NPCs. In response to this new power monks became more dedicated flag stand monks and less able to survive alone.

Fix the balance of power in scrimmage builds and it would fix a lot of the problems with GvG in general.

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 04, 2007, 05:17 AM // 05:17

I don't know why everyone keeps parroting the "frontlines do more damage now" line. Frontline bars right now are almost identical to what they were pre-NF, and the skills they use haven't gotten significantly stronger. A few NF or EoTN skills see play on frontlines, but it's not like Enraging Charge or Distracting Strike is going to break the game wide open.

Instead, we've seen significant power creep on both offensive and defensive midliners. Mesmers get buffed interrupts that run well on secondaries, allowing teams to break each other with spread interrupts and Power Leaks. Natural Stride is the uberstance, allowing rangers to sit on your backline and never be punished for it. Rits allow teams to bring strong AoE without sacrificing skirmish ability. Meanwhile, strong snare templates and defense characters make it much harder for the frontline to make plays of their own, limiting their options and increasing reliance on the midline.

These days, most of the plays people make originate from the midline. Your midline creates windows of opportunity, and your frontline capitalizes on it.

There are a greater variety of frontline characters now. You have trees that give up their KDs for stronger spikes, and sins that force kills through mobility. But more options doesn't always mean more power.

Bankai · Nov 04, 2007, 08:29 AM // 08:29

The only thing that has changed to warriors is a ritualist using splinter weapon on him. That's all I can think of. The warriorspike itself isn't really a problem, but the support is. Back when earth warders were still popular, they had almost nothing to spike with- obs flame maybe, but that was very easily interrupted. Now they can spike with shell shock and another skill that I forgot, just because they're dual elements. Yes, Izzy has finally been able to create elementalists with two elements, but that neccessarily isn't a good thing. Esurge is also quite stronger now, so mesmers also deal more damage than they used to. Then there's also the paragon, which is most often run in the slot where you would otherwise run a ranger, which also adds a lot of damage to the spike. You can see that the general build lay-out is the same (dual war, ele, mes, ranger), but now all characters can join the spike, instead of only the warriors.

And that is what makes spikes stronger. Midliners can now also deal damage, instead of only disrupting/applying defense to your team.

Another thing that I've noticed is that now that Izzy has finally made hard resses popular (he mentions in an interview about Factions that he was trying to make people use hard resses in battle with flesh of my flesh), games don't move back and forth so much. It used to be the case that if you were pushed into your guild-hall, 1 kill could make the difference. However, with the dual hard res every guild is taking, the killed player is just ressed, and they continue killing you. Another thing that Izzy had been pushing for some time, that was actually not that awesome for the game.

Edit: Also, Izzy, if you're reading this. Please stop buffing counters and alternatives, but just nerf skills. Buffing counters and alternatives only feeds the power-creep.

Seamus Finn · Nov 04, 2007, 09:07 AM // 09:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xioden

And do you GvG with people using holiday headpieces? These "headshots" are news to me.

"Headshots" refer to rangers/archers(I suppose paragons as well) getting an increased chance of critical hits when standing on higher ground than their target. If you gank weeping, for instance, you would notice those two archers standing on the bridge deal a lot more damage than the archer before the front gate standng by the footmen. Flatbows increase the crit rate as well because the large arch can gve some of the effect of standing on higher ground.

The rest of your post seems uninformed by play of an even remotely competitive nature.

Akaraxle · Nov 04, 2007, 09:56 AM // 09:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I don't know why everyone keeps parroting the "frontlines do more damage now" line. Frontline bars right now are almost identical to what they were pre-NF, and the skills they use haven't gotten significantly stronger. A few NF or EoTN skills see play on frontlines, but it's not like Enraging Charge or Distracting Strike is going to break the game wide open.

True, but Rending Touch is something I'd look at.

Quote:

Instead, we've seen significant power creep on both offensive and defensive midliners. Mesmers get buffed interrupts that run well on secondaries, allowing teams to break each other with spread interrupts and Power Leaks. Natural Stride is the uberstance, allowing rangers to sit on your backline and never be punished for it. Rits allow teams to bring strong AoE without sacrificing skirmish ability. Meanwhile, strong snare templates and defense characters make it much harder for the frontline to make plays of their own, limiting their options and increasing reliance on the midline.

I was never a big fan of buffed Mesmer interrupts, to be honest: that's about when people started considering Lightning Orb as pleak bait and brought about Bolt.

Natural Stride is something I've called imbalanced ever since it existed. It feels a bit like the old Distortion, but it's up half the time, doesn't drain your energy and functions as a speed boost (which is a HUGE advantage). To an extent, it shares the same peculiarity that makes Blinding Surge good, aka different functions packed into one skill. Couple it with Mending Touch and you've got a virtually unkillable toon that can completely disregard positioning and go where it'll hurt the most without being worried about getting DP.

This is probably what the Ranger is supposed to do - I'm just commenting objectively.

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 04, 2007, 10:01 AM // 10:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

The only thing that has changed to warriors is a ritualist using splinter weapon on him. That's all I can think of. The warriorspike itself isn't really a problem, but the support is. Back when earth warders were still popular, they had almost nothing to spike with- obs flame maybe, but that was very easily interrupted. Now they can spike with shell shock and another skill that I forgot, just because they're dual elements. Yes, Izzy has finally been able to create elementalists with two elements, but that neccessarily isn't a good thing. Esurge is also quite stronger now, so mesmers also deal more damage than they used to. Then there's also the paragon, which is most often run in the slot where you would otherwise run a ranger, which also adds a lot of damage to the spike. You can see that the general build lay-out is the same (dual war, ele, mes, ranger), but now all characters can join the spike, instead of only the warriors.

And that is what makes spikes stronger. Midliners can now also deal damage, instead of only disrupting/applying defense to your team.

Midlines have been tossing offense into spikes since before Factions. E/Mo runners did not bring Lightning Orb because the icon looks pretty.

The DDs brought on midline templates bring are more efficient than they used to be. Ancestors Rage is retardedly strong, and paragons can apply a ranged deep wound and spike damage. But even with the buffs, the damage an individual midliner contributes in a spike timeframe hasn't gone up all that much. People are still using the same Shatter Enchantment on mesmers they've been using to spike for years, and it doesn't feel that outclassed by other options. The additional midline pressure has much more to do with disruption and AoE than brutal game-winning 321spikes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

Another thing that I've noticed is that now that Izzy has finally made hard resses popular (he mentions in an interview about Factions that he was trying to make people use hard resses in battle with flesh of my flesh), games don't move back and forth so much. It used to be the case that if you were pushed into your guild-hall, 1 kill could make the difference. However, with the dual hard res every guild is taking, the killed player is just ressed, and they continue killing you. Another thing that Izzy had been pushing for some time, that was actually not that awesome for the game.

Other way around. Having strong hard res options makes comebacks possible, because a team stays in the game after they've depleted their sigs. If someone's pushed you into your base, they're getting constant boosts anyway and don't mind wasting a sig on an incidental death. The losing team is always the one who benefits from more powerful hard res options.

Ensign · Nov 04, 2007, 10:09 AM // 10:09

Warriors haven't changed all that much since the release of Guild Wars. Eviscerate, Executioner's, Bull's Strike, Frenzy, Rush, Res and a couple slots that have an interrupt, a 3rd attack, Shock, Rending Touch, what have you.

The drastic offense / defense balance changes from Nightfall center around the introduction of Paragons, the huge buffs to Assassins, and the Monk nerfs. Paragons add another melee worth of damage to a team that also provides midline roles, while Shadow Prison and the black combos set up the instagib lolsins. At the same time, nerfs to Divine Boon and emanagement chipped away at the self-sustainability of Monks, as well as their ability to function as much more than a prot turret. Between Mending Touch and HEV, a lot of previously valuable active shutdown has become marginalized as well.

Essentially, Monks have less tools to prepare for a wider variety of real threats, while Warriors are less stoppable now than at any point in the history of the game. I tend to disagree with Squidget, right now the value of midline is at an all time low (you just take a single Mesmer for the enchant removals and a couple interrupts) and the game is all about your physicals beating the hell out of their Monks.

Akaraxle · Nov 04, 2007, 10:23 AM // 10:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Essentially, Monks have less tools to prepare for a wider variety of real threats, while Warriors are less stoppable now than at any point in the history of the game. I tend to disagree with Squidget, right now the value of midline is at an all time low (you just take a single Mesmer for the enchant removals and a couple interrupts) and the game is all about your physicals beating the hell out of their Monks.

The "Warriors are less stoppable" is a pretty good observation.

I have mixed feelings about Mesmers, though. Their value is not really low, IMO: it's just that, every time a really strong template shows up (MoR, HEV) it gets inevitably nerfed - which is not necessarily a bad thing. And they're still good at doing what kills people, i.e. disabling/pleaking LoD (although a Ranger can do it as well).

Ensign · Nov 04, 2007, 10:50 AM // 10:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akaraxle

I have mixed feelings about Mesmers, though. Their value is not really low, IMO

I didn't mean to say that Mesmers are bad; they're pretty close to essential, and even when they don't show up you see their core functions (interrupts and enchantment removal) on other characters in the build.

What I should perhaps say is that modern Dom bars make most midline characters a joke; Power Leak is a beast and keeps getting buffed, while the endless dance with HEV seriously constrains what sort of midline characters you can even consider running.

It's similar to how lolsins have put a lot of pressure on flaggers to ramp up the self defense.

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 04, 2007, 10:59 AM // 10:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I tend to disagree with Squidget, right now the value of midline is at an all time low (you just take a single Mesmer for the enchant removals and a couple interrupts) and the game is all about your physicals beating the hell out of their Monks.

Reading your post, I think we're not using the same terminology. I usually refer to 'Frontline' as character's who's primary role is melee attacks, such as warriors, dervishes, and Iso. If your 'frontline' encompasses all physical classes then I'd agree with you, as paragons have added significantly to offense, and rangers are more capable than almost any other class of making the big game-winning plays.

My point was, warriors beingless stoppable comes from the increased power of disruptive skills and plays, rather than the increased power of warriors themeselves. Warriors are in the same place they were a year ago, but the rest of the team has evolved to better disrupt their defenses and force your warriors' damage onto their team.

Snow Bunny · Nov 04, 2007, 07:10 PM // 19:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akaraxle

True, but Rending Touch is something I'd look at.

I think rending touch the way it is works well.

I mean, it's still a skill you have to use with some degree of care, just like shock.

Akaraxle · Nov 04, 2007, 07:22 PM // 19:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

I think rending touch the way it is works well.

I mean, it's still a skill you have to use with some degree of care, just like shock.

Shock causes Exhaustion, which means it effectively costs 10 energy and digs you in a deeper hole the more you spam it. Rending Touch can be easily used on recharge (at 2 pips, over 8 seconds you regain slightly more than the 5 energy you spent) and I've seen guilds training a target for huge damage simply because the [pre]prots you toss at it suddenly don't matter (a la Avatar of Grenth).

You gotta be very careful with short recharge enchant removal.